Descension
A six-year-old sat on the warm cement block in the tangled woods behind the old house, petting the calico curled up in her lap. She wasn't allowed to touch strays, but abuela was napping. She smiled at the skinny kitten, cooed over it, muttered nonsense a child would mutter. "I-i-i-i-if I was a p-p-pr-princess, you c-c-could be a princess with me, and then we'd- we'd both have c-castles. W-would you- would you like that, Melissa? Y-yes I would," The girl crowed back at herself, "I-i-if we wanted to w-w-we-we..." She fell silent, smile fading into a cold stare as she regarded the sleeping creature. "You aren't playing right." The kitten's ear flicked, and it didn't stir. The child waited, assessing the animal. The fishing line in her pocket was tangled, but after studying the knots, she worked them out while the kitten dozed. She felt the string between her fingers, her mop of dark curls hanging over her dead gaze, and looped the line twice around Melissa's neck, a royal riviere. The kitten's orange side rose and fell. Rita Degollar pulled the garrote taught. __FORCETOC__ The Cheated Family Kerrville had done the Degollar household a favor, taking on the burden of one sickly babe and gifting the good folks another, better one. This infant never got colds, never kept them up late with her cries. They raised her as their own, piercing her ears with gold, teaching her to walk early, but they failed to make her speak with fluency. Rare in toddlers, the doctor told them. The early years were fraught with changes for the young family. The father graduated, became a cop. Kindergarten was merciless: the child put on a brave face her first week, but after that, she cried like the faulty babe she had replaced, because the other kids didn't like her. Pets were brought home and cared for, but they soon disappeared. The mother went to work as a dispatcher. Abuelita stayed over when Rita's parents could not. Meat Dinner sounds plinked down the short hallway, her father home from work. Rita stayed in her room, sniffling and relating her woes to her new friend in a whisper, so Dad wouldn't think she had someone over. "What if you made them like you?" Miguel suggested, trying to help the blotchy-faced girl. She hiccuped, curled in front of his pinkish face on her bed. "B-b-b-b-but I already tried that. Th-they knew I don't really read co-comics, ssssss-" She shut her eyes, smearing the tears away with her sleeve. "Hey, come on." She felt him pat her shoulder with a hoof. "Don't cry, Rita. I mean, make them like you, like how you made me like you." She sniffed and looked into his empty eyes. "I-I-I-I-I-I'd g-g-ge-get... get in trouble. And they'd try to hurt me. You k-kicked me." He sighed. "I said I was sorry, okay?" His clipped ears perked up. "You dad's coming, hide me!" The flies took off as Rita snatched the sticky pile of gore up and stuffed it back into the stained towel. "Sorry." "It's okay," She imagined the mutilated deer bits assuring her, "I like the dark." She stuffed the bundle under the bed just as she heard knocking on her door. "Rita," warned her father, "You know you aren't supposed to keep this door closed, it makes your room-" "Sorry dad," She pulled it open. "-Smell like dead animal." He scrunched up his face. "Whoa. Open a window, mija." "I-I-I-It was t-t-t-t-t-too hot outside er-earlier, and a b-bunch of ffff-fl-fl-flies got in, s-s-so that's why I d-d-didn't." She babbled at the huge man, him listening with accustomed patience. "Well if you'd keep the screen closed, then maybe..." He shook his head, remembering his purpose. "Mama told me about what happened at school." The second grader fell silent, and twisted her fingers into her curls, pulling the chunk in back that'd been snipped close to her scalp, courtesy of the same kids who'd tried to give her a flea bath three weeks ago. "Wanna help me make fajitas?" Rita nodded, and stepped out of her room, leaving squirming spaghetti worms sauced with blood in her footprints down the hallway. Enrique blinked, and they were gone. He hoped the migraine would let up soon. He hoped those punks in his daughter's class got expelled, second graders or not. Little psychos. The Longest Day Lies Matter For the third day in a row, Rita took the wrong bus home from school. She hated sitting in back, but the front was always taken up by band and orchestra kids, who only had room for their bulky instrument cases and their nice friends. It was too loud, in back. They cussed too much, and they never spoke to her, just yelled over her at their friends, but they let her sit with them. She just waited, with her shiny curls over her face. She got off on the first stop, with the majority of the kids, so the driver maybe wouldn't notice her. She picked the same group, the largest, and shadowed them closely, as if she were part of it. They would ignore her, and that made it easier to pretend. She smiled and laughed at their jokes when others did it. She shifted the weight of her yellow backpack when they would. She memorized all their names, though she'd never asked them, only learned them when they came up in conversation. She pretended to have a crush on one of the boys, since everyone else had crushes. She fantasized about telling other girls her invented secret, imagined the gasps and giggling, but it'd never happened like it did on TV. She had no one to tell, anyway. None of them cared. None of the group she'd been following for three blocks even looked at her, so none of them noticed when she stopped and walked a different direction, for the third day in a row. No one said goodbye. There was a little pond in this neighborhood, if you crossed the rusty half-bridge and waded through the weeds until your shoes squelched in mud. Rita was careful not to get them dirty there. Dark scuffs were cool, but the pale mud wasn't. She sat on the broken cement slab, and did homework on her knee, until a little toad hopped out of the grass. With a predator's silence she slipped the papers into her bag, and leaned back. Snatching the thing was easy. She held it by its head, let its piss fall away from her while she watched. She pinched one of its feet between her warm fingers, and held it by that. She flung it in the crisp air and caught it. She tossed it again, and again. Then, she squeezed the creature. She played with the limp body until the light faded. She zipped up her bag, and threw the mangled toad into the pond. She heard a noise behind her, and snapped to look, fearing a kidnapper. Nothing was there, save a patch of twined thorns. On the main road, she focused on the old sidewalk, avoiding every crack while she hugged herself against the cold. The girl paused once to inspect a fallen bird's body, its wing stuck up against a painted fence. It breathed so fast, round chest heaving and heaving. She mumbled to it, cooed at the unfortunate avian with kind words. Then cold settled on the fifth grader's face. She waited until no cars were coming, and stomped on the grackle's head until its beak shattered. A dog started barking at her from the other side of the white wall, and she jumped. Through the slim space she stared at the drooling thing, but it wasn't barking at her. Some squirrel, maybe. She kept on her way, smearing the blood on her rubber sole onto the walk. The road was mostly downhill. She jogged across every intersection. She wanted to run, fearing the cars, but the other kids always walked. She didn't have far to go, but she needed to get home before full dark. That was the deal. "I'm glad you're making friends," Her father three days ago assured. "You can go to Jessica's after school, but don't stay out past dark. Call me if you need a ride home." Dark meant totally dark, Rita had figured. She was making friends, anyway. Dad said she could stay out, the ten-year-old rationalized, he didn't exactly say it had to be at Jessica's. She twisted up her mouth, imagining his response to that. "You know what I meant, Margarita." She pushed it out of her head before the follow-up "You lied to me." The wide ditch shortcut into her neighborhood had a rainwater river down the basin, so Rita walked along the slope, watching the inch-deep runoff, pretending she edged along a lost canyon cut by treacherous rapids. Movement caught her eye. A stray puppy poked along the other side. He was her companion, of course. A magical expert tracker named Wizard, because he was a dog wizard. "Come here, puppy!" She called. He was so cute, and he was all alone. Stranded, perhaps, in another world, their dimensions split by this rushing river. The black dog looked at her, not playing the same game. Rita waited in the shadow of a dying tree, but it kept walking, way lit by twilight, in that other world. There was only one way she could merge the realms. A sacrifice had to be made, when the world wasn't washed in sunshine or in darkness. She pulled a chewed pen out of her pocket, and stalked down the incline. "What are you doing?" Rita flinched at the sound, her heel splashing in the river as she whirled on it. A wolf the size of a lion stood where she had, more bright teeth bared than what belonged in a T-rex mouth. She struggled to assign it a role in her story. A magical guardian, leader of the snow kingdom? The white fur suggested it. It prowled down toward her with taloned paws the size of her face. "What are you doing with that pen?" It was her princess dagger. "W-w-wuh-wuh-wizard's blood is the on-only--" "You gonna stick that dog with it? You gonna break its legs, like you did that frog?" It wasn't a frog, it was a toad, and he was her friend now, so he was fine. She took another step back, regretting her wet shoes. Dad would know she went through the ditch. "N-n-n..." "How about smashing its brains out, like that bird? I saw you, you sick fucking psycho." Its mouth moved with the words. Its yellow eyes flashed with madness, and brambles stuck in its matted coat. This was wrong. She tried to say something, but her jaw was stuck fast. This wasn't the story. The hulking canine was really there, and really talking to her. Calling her names. Her heart hammered so hard in her ears that the noise almost drowned the growling out. It tilted its head like the athlete girls did whenever they were about to- "How would you like it if someone did that to you?" Everything she'd always ignored crashed against her story world, like her head when it hit the cement. Conviction The child wasn't crying, because it hadn't occurred to her to start. She couldn't see any stars. The wolf had dragged her somewhere, but he left a while ago. She could stick her tongue through the ragged hole in her cheek. It was too cold to sleep, and her clothes were soaked. Her shaking woke her up. She couldn't see her numb fingers, all rent and bleeding. She knew she was uncomfortable, felt claustrophobic, but she wasn't sure why. She couldn't get up. Rita had made a promise. It changed her, but she wasn't sure what the words were. Something about never. She moved a trembling arm. The ache was distant and dull. Something vroomed above her. She turned her head, and something plastic scraped against rough concrete. The little tunnel under the street, she realized. Gangster drug dealers lived in here. It might have taken minutes or hours to crawl out. Getting to her feet took less time, but staying upright was its own challenge. She staggered over to her lost backpack, and spent another forever trying to shoulder it. Something was wrong with her hands. Where was her jacket? She started crying now. She was so late, she was going to get in trouble for being in the ditch. She found it in a heap next to a vibrating wad of wet fur. The black dog. "You promise, you promise?" The monster's slavering teeth flashed in her shredded face, mocking her pleas. "Sure, promise me. I know sickos like you, and you never change." She choked out something like "I'm sorry." "Prooomise me," He whined, "That you'll never, ever do any of that shit again. You don't maim, you don't torture, you don't kill in cold fucking blood for no fucking reason. Not even one time for the rest of your fucking life, or else I will know, and I will find you, and I will rip your fucking throat out and eat your evil guts." The little girl gurgled and nodded. It laughed at her, wide jaws red with her blood. "Yeah, right. We'll see how long this lasts." She kept crying, and picked up her jacket, throwing it around the puppy and scooping him up. It didn't fight her. The slope she stumbled up, back onto the street. She walked forever, with a bag and a burden that weighed tons each. Cold, cold. She couldn't remember where she was going. Awake Fear and fever gripped Enrique like his own hands on the steering wheel. He swore at the needles on the dashboard, begged his daughter dying in the passenger seat to just hang on. Eyes like headlamps flashed at him, glowing blood streamed off the windshield like brake-lit rain. His oaths waxed incoherent. "Not this time, not this fucking time you grinning motherfucker," He swerved off the highway, his car screamed all down the exit ramp. "TOO FAST," It shrieked, not in English. "Not this time," The old man agreed, and eased out of the backseat. His world opened and shut in the car door, and they were past it. Rita opened empty eye sockets, maggots squirming at the edges like the melting world in Enrique's peripheral. "Watch out!" Not English. "Rex?!" They shot around a great dragon that roared like a sounding horn. His mangled cyborg dog looked at him. Like an eighteen wheeler, Leviathan itself shattered the crying vehicle. "A boy!" The vivid hound made of spiraling blues and orange sprinted away, leaping impossible ferns and dodging floral jaws. "Run, boy! Run with me!" He ran, unsure how he understood the garbled tongue. Wounds he didn't notice healed over, but his fever kept raging, his head kept spinning. "Rex! Rex, where's Rita?" The canine looked nothing like Rex at all, but it slowed just enough to stay in earshot of the ill mortal. "What?" "My daughter!" Gasped Enrique. "Hurry up, boy!" The beat cop didn't tire. The air fueled him, his passion grew inexhaustible. He dashed over green and slithering undergrowth, bounded over whole rivers clearer than the blazing sky. He wanted to laugh, cry with joy at the wonder of this supernal world, but the image of his baby girl sharpened his teeth and kept him sober. "The tower, boy!" The swirling spirit called back at him, and Enrique saw it, a monolith of black stone draped in thick brambles. He laughed, then, hollering through his confused grin. "What the hell, man? Why is there a fucking penis?" The dog just laughed, too, vermillion smoke spilling out of his mouth. Ricky's heart raced with life. Acid-colored butterflies exploded out of the brush he whipped through, and he was out in the open, racing over a wide plain of clover that ended in a sharp cliff where the great tower waited for him. "Here!" The azure beast rolled over in the verdant carpet like a puppy, orange tongue lolling. "Goodbye, boy!" Ricky vaulted up the horned curtain. He had to write his name inside of it, with his teeth. Blood rivered down his arms. Hours. Seconds. Hot blood on warm stone. D-E-G-O-L-L-A-R He was spinning. Stars twinkled all around him like a million tiny shards of glass. He landed on his feet and stumbled to a halt, tasting the stone dust in his mouth. His child lay twisted up on the sidewalk, and he looked at her with new eyes. She was just an empty shell. Lifeless. No. NO. He scooped up the body and kept running. "Stay with me, mija. Stay with me." He yelled at lights to change, and they did. He outran Olympians. The sad and hopeful eyes of an old, old hospital watched him approach. He was inside. His daughter's blood was evaporating off him while he screamed at the nurse. He was a cop. He was going in there with her. In the waiting room full of other concerned relatives, he was alone. He was a cop, he told the night doctor. He didn't need to sit down. The chair wasn't comfortable. He waited there. Called Lisa. He opened his hand, looking at the chewed plastic pen, half vermillion with blood. He'd seen it stuck in her hair, the matching gouges in her face. Who did this? No answer. Category:Fiction